Hold Congress Accountable

About FreedomConnector

Find activists, groups, and events right in your own neighborhood. Join FreedomConnector to get involved and learn more about key issues threatening our economic freedom. Whether you’re looking for like-minded people, trying to boost your existing group’s impact, or simply trying to stay up on current events, FreedomConnector is the place to start. See what’s happening in your state today!

Search FreedomWorks

Resources

Blog

Elena Kagan Must Recuse Herself from ObamaCare Case

After several federal judges have declared ObamaCare unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has finally decided that it will hear challenges to the health care overhaul law. This could be one of the most closely watched and politically-charged Supreme Court cases in the past few decades. While I hope that the nation’s highest court makes the correct decision regarding ObamaCare, we shouldn’t automatically trust the justices to uphold the Constitution.

We all know that the Constitution grants very few powers to the federal government. Only about thirty enumerated powers are listed throughout the entire document. Our founding document clearly prohibits the federal government from forcing citizens to purchase a product simply because they exist. Almost everything that Congress does is not within bounds of the Constitution yet the Supreme Court rarely ever strikes down a law as unconstitutional. Between the years 1937 to 1995, the Supreme Court did not declare one single law unconstitutional according to the Tenth Amendment Center. This is exactly what Thomas Jefferson feared.

Jefferson warned that if the federal government has a monopoly on determining the extent of its own powers, these powers would continue to grow regardless of separation of powers. This is why James Madison declared that states were “duty bound to resist” any federal law that violated the Constitution. A majority of the states have pushed back against the health care overhaul law. The recent passage of Issue 3 also known as the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment is a win for the states against federal abuse.

The main point is just because ObamaCare is unconstitutional doesn’t mean the Supreme Court will rule it so. Some justices more than others have shown that they are not interested in upholding our founding document. They wrongly see it as a “living document” that can be interpreted as they please based on the political whims of the day. Their dangerous philosophy has essentially rendered the Constitution pointless. As historian Kevin Gutzman says, “those who give us a living Constitution are actually giving us a dead Constitution, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us from the encroachments of government power.”

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan made it clear that she sees almost no limits to federal power in her confirmation hearing last summer. She was even unable to answer a question on whether it is constitutional for the federal government to force citizens to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day. Knowing what we are up against, is there anything we can do to help ensure that the Supreme Court makes the right decision? I would say that the best thing we can do is to call on Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself—abstain from participating from the case—due to a conflict of interest.

Elena Kagan as Solicitor General for the Obama administration claims she was present at “at least one” meeting regarding strategy for the defense of ObamaCare. The Judicial Crisis Network has made the case that her involvement is much more substantial than she is admitting. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that she cheered on the passage of ObamaCare in a number of emails. On March 21, 2010, an email was exchanged between Kagan and then-Senior Counselor for Access Justice Laurence Tribe. Kagan writes “I hear they have the votes!! Simply amazing…” and Tribe responds “So healthcare is basically done! Remarkable.”

Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the case as matter of integrity. She has recused herself from 29 of 82 Supreme Court cases because of her previous work as Solicitor General. The ObamaCare case should be no exception. Section 455 of Title 28 of the United States Code (the Judicial Code) states that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that calling the passage of ObamaCare “simply amazing” and using double exclamation points implies a bit (okay, a lot) of partiality.

Let’s hope that the Supreme Court actually stands up for the original intent of the Constitution. Justice Elena Kagan is not a defender of our constitutional rights; she is a partisan cheerleader for ObamaCare. Regardless of what the Supreme Court happens to rule next June, ObamaCare will remain a clear violation of the Constitution and should be immediately repealed for the sake of our health care freedom.

I'm completely on board with you until the last sentence in the next to last paragraph. I know that you meant to say that Kagan is obviously supportive of ObamaCare, and she is therefore not the least bit impartial. However, you're assertion claims the exact opposite of that reality, and I'm sure it was just an oversight.

Julie, I'm in agreement with you and to add to it I see the encroachment of the federal government continuing because of States rights (checks & balances) have been lost with the passage of the 17th Amendment. Senators should be appointed by the legislature of each State as it was before the 17th Amendment. An individual has very limited access and no one on one,face to face access to the Senators in his state, but an individual does have that access with the legislators in his community and State. If the legislators appointed the Senators the special interest groups with their large donations would have less influence and the people of the State would have more. Then there would be the checks and balances of power which is the original intent of the Constitution.

This title was adopted from a line by Justice Sotomayor during the recent Supreme Court oral arguments in Rodriguez v. United States. Over time there has been an encroachment on our Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches, as Justice Sotomayor also said, “. . . we can’t keep bending the Fourth Amendment to the resources of law enforcement.” It is time for the courts to push back and protect our constitutional rights. Fortunately, two recent cases, one at the Supreme Court and another at the circuit level, have given great opportunities to do just this.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments for the King v. Burwell case starting March 4th, with a decision likely to come down sometime in June. The Court’s decision will determine whether the IRS’ illegal implementation of ObamaCare subsidies to states that refused to set up insurance exchanges can continue. If not, the true cost of ObamaCare will be revealed to the American public, a cost that has until now been partially concealed by the IRS’ decision to circumvent the written law.

While we may not agree with all speech we come across, it is important for liberty-minded individuals to defend all constitutionally protected speech. If we do not protect speech that we may not agree with, or that is of limited importance to us, there will be fewer people willing to defend speech that we care deeply about. Also, once the Supreme Court rules some speech can be restricted and still withstand constitutional scrutiny, it becomes easier for the Court to rule other speech can be restricted as well.

After being estranged from his wife and fired from his job, Anthony Elonis began posting a series of disturbing Facebook statuses that spoke of harming and killing his ex-wife, initiating “the most heinous school-shooting ever imagined,” and blowing up FBI agents.

ObamaCare is, once again, headed to the nation's highest court. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over an IRS rule that granted tax credit subsidies to states that opted not to create an ObamaCare exchange. By granting review, the Supreme Court is going against the wishes of the Obama administration, which had argued that the case, King v. Burwell, should work its way through lower courts:

On February 12, 2014 FreedomWorks and Rand Paul, under the legal counsel of Ken Cuccinelli, filed suit against Barack Obama & The NSA, claiming injury due to the warrantless collection of metadata of the cellphone records of Rand Paul and FreedomWorks members and employees. The case, 14-CV-262, was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.